1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to video terminal system, and more particularly, to the processing and transfer of information to unlike output devices which display alphanumeric information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In processing information to be displayed, a problem display devices must confront is translating the signals (bit patterns) transmitted by the computer into the visual characters recognized by people. Examples of such devices that perform this translation are video display screens and hard copy printers.
Historically, each such device has required its own unique circuitry to translate the computer's signals. In addition to the extra circuitry required, unique signal decoding also means the computer is required to service each output device separately even though in many cases the same information is being transmitted to various devices. This is often time consuming since the information may have to be reformatted and changed in order to allow separate output devices to be utilized.
It has been determined that only a small portion of the information which is transferred to output devices is required as a hard copy. In view of the significant time differential required for printing a hard copy of the information versus the time for displaying the information on a video display screen, it would be advantageous to be able to print only certain lines thus increasing the overall speed and efficiency of the multiple distinct output devices. Moreover, this also saves considerable paper.